


At This Point In History

by rokhal



Series: Robbie Reyes and Noble Kale's Hellish Road-Trip! [3]
Category: Ghost Rider (Comics), Marvel (Comics)
Genre: (censored), Bombs, Demons, Gen, Motorcycles, Penance Stare, Racist Language, Robbie can't drive in mud, Vigilantism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2019-12-31 21:46:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18322559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rokhal/pseuds/rokhal
Summary: The Ghost Rider, the Roast Rider, and a demon who used to be human set out to purge a sleepy Indiana town of white nationalism.No warnings yet, but I'll get around to graphic depictions of violence some time soon.





	1. Appetizer

**Author's Note:**

> When we last left our heroes at the hot wings place, Black Rose (nee Roxanne Simpson) had straight-up chugged two bottles of Tabasco, Noble Kale had gotten habañero sauce in his eye, and Robbie had run off to yell at himself in the bathroom. Oh, and they'd saved the world.
> 
> Now they've left the restaurant. Black Rose thinks this sleepy Indiana town is infested with white nationalists. The eldest Ghost Rider opposes killing humans, but Tabasco hasn't exactly sated her hunger.
> 
> They won't notice if she just takes a little sip.
> 
> Written for the fan-flashworks prompt "Point" and bingo prompt "History."
> 
> Warning: Asshole POV. Mention of rape and spousal abuse.

Mark loved reading Clive Cussler novels, not starring in them.

He was stripped to his boxers, duck-taped hand-and-foot to his own swivel chair in his home office, his red hat gone, the crown of his head shamefully bare. It was supposed to be easy to get out of duck tape. Anyway, this was never supposed to happen to him.

He was the kind of man who did the taping. He'd thought.

He stared up at the six-point rack that hung over his PC, the antlers casting moving shadows against the corkboard as one of the intruders nosed around his ranch on a Harley soft-tail. The big gunsafe was behind him. He had his AR in there, and a shotgun and a box of 12-gauge slugs for hunting deer, perfect to put a hole in the trash invading his home, teasingly inaccessible. He scooted around anyway, dragging the tape around the chair base, to gaze at the safe.

When he got turned around enough to look over his shoulder, he startled.

There was a woman lying at the base of the gunsafe, her feet tied with something white, and her hands behind her back. A red-head. Two pig-tails, making her look younger than she was, which Mark didn't mind. The way her hands were bound, her chest pushed up at him.

“Oh, please,” she begged. “Help me. They're coming back—coming back to hurt me. I'll do anything!”

“I'm a little busy being tied to this chair, missy,” Mark grunted. “Wait a minute. When'd you get here?”

“I've been here the whole time,” the woman panted. “You have to stop them. You have friends. Guns!”

That he did, Mark acknowledged. Guns, friends with guns, and a few other things. “What do I want, what can I get,” he muttered. “What do I want, what can I get.”

“Could your friends stop them?”

“Yeah,” Mark said. “Yeah, just got to get the message out—Roy'll get the boys in line, Roy's solid—unless he overdid the booze—and the whiz-kid. Ryan, Private Ryan. Whoever this asshole is, gonna be nothing but a bloody smear when I'm done with him.”

“The boys?” the woman asked. She had soft pink lips, and a little gap between her teeth. Freckles on her nose and her cleavage.

“Yeah,” Mark assured her. “My boys, me and Roy's boys, Forthreit Motorcycle Club. Not just motorcycles, not anymore. We're soldiers. Protecting the real America. Not the America pushed on us by the mainstream media, the @#&#$s and the $@&!%s and the fucking $&%@#s. The _Real_ America. Real people, like you and me.”

“Shouldn't we call the police?” the woman protested. “Get them arrested?”

Mark bit his cheek, thinking of Ryan's stash in his old utility shed by the cow pasture. “Probably best we handle this ourselves.”

“You're right,” the woman said. She was standing now. Unbound. When had she—?

He wasn't complaining. “Hey. Hey, get me loose.”

“Call your friends,” she demanded. “Hurry.” And she ripped the tape off his arms with her bare hands. The tape tore at his arm hair, and he hissed. Stared at the gun safe.

“Forget the boys, just let me get into the safe! I'll run 'em off!” Mark leaned down to peel his legs free, but the woman stopped him with a hand under his chin.

“No. Call your friends. Tell them to come ready for a fight.”

“I'll handle this myself, it's just two guys—”

“No,” she insisted. “You're right. You need to handle this yourselves, but you've got to get the job done. That means everyone working together. You can't risk what you've built. Where's your phone?”

“Pants pocket,” Mark grunted. Wherever his pants were. He didn't remember getting tied up, he'd just staggered up from the couch at a loud knocking, opened the door to see a hippie wearing a Lakers jersey under a flannel work-shirt, a shrimpy Mexican with pierced ears, and...a female _thing,_ behind them in the shadows. And he couldn't remember anything until a minute ago, staring up at the rack of the whitetail buck Ryan had shot last fall. His head didn't hurt, and he didn't feel nauseated. What—

He was tied to his office-chair hand and foot. A woman stood in front of him, holding out a cell phone. Short, freckles, red hair, cute rack. “Oh, thank Golly you're awake,” she exclaimed. “They took my phone, they're coming back for me, they'll  _hurt_ me, Mark, they're animals.” She held up his phone. “Call Roy. And Ryan. Tell them to get everyone, we need everyone here. We have to take care of this ourselves, we're too close! We can't risk what we've built!”

“What are you doing here?” Mark demanded, squinting. “Do I know you?”

“I'm Roy's...friend,” she said, looking down and blushing. “They dumped me here. They got your place surrounded, Mark. But they don't know us. They don't know Forthright Motorcycle Club.”

“No, they don't,” Mark agreed. “Get me loose.”

The woman set the phone down and tugged ineffectually on the duck tape. “I can't—they're coming! Should I call 911?”

“No, no.” Mark gave her his PIN to unlock the phone. “Get Roy, he's in charge after me.” She fumbled through the menus. Mark gritted his teeth; you'd think she'd never used a smart-phone before. “Roy. There! That's him. Call him. Just push Send. Green button. Oh, Jesus.” She dropped the phone, scooped it up, scowled at him. “I know, I know, taking the Lord's name in vain, now could you hurry the fuck up, lady!”

She called Roy, held the phone up to the side of his face. Mark clenched his fists, hoping Roy would pick up. Hoping he hadn't already drunk his way to sleep.

“Talk to me,” Roy said after the second ring.

“Scramble the men!” Mark yelled. “Get everyone out to the ranch, there's a #@%& and his %&#$ sniffing around, they tied me to a damn chair, they're gonna find the stuff, Roy. This is not a drill!”

“Everyone?”

“Everyone!”

“Even Private Ryan?”

“Especially Private Ryan.”

Roy paused, rustling over the line. “Say, Mark, what's the weather forecast tomorrow?”

“Blood and hailstones pouring from the heavens,” Roy chuckled.

“No shit?”

“No shit. Rubber hits the road tonight. At this point in history, someone's gotta draw first blood. And it's gonna be us.”

“No shit!”

“Hurry.”

“I'm hurrying.” More rustling. “I'll get the word out. How soon did you say?”

“Right now. _Right now._ They're sniffing around the ranch as we speak, I told you, I am literally tied to a chair right now.”

“You sure about that weather forecast?” Roy asked skeptically.

“Sure as anything. Got a little chickadee helping me, says she's a friend of yours.” 

The woman's lips thinned.

“Carla?” Roy demanded. “Carla's with you?”

“It's me, Beth,” the woman interjected, grabbing the phone away. “Don't say you forgot me, Roy? Who's Carla?”

“Gimme the phone back,” Mark demanded, before they could get too distracted. “I'm tied to a chair, get help, get the boys to bring the thunder. And Ryan!”

“Who's Carla?” the woman demanded, her voice rising. Roy hung up.

“Find a fucking pair of scissors, woman, get me loose!” Mark demanded, as she stared down at the phone with a satisfied expression. 

She tossed the phone over her shoulder and it cracked against the gunsafe.

“Woman!”

“No,” she said, turning her back. She went to the window and peered out, at the shifting lights that circled the ranch. “I'm absolutely fucking famished, Mark Thompson,” she said.

“Get me loose and I'll heat up a pizza,” Mark said impatiently. “The scissors are in that drawer. By your hand.”

“I feel like I haven't eaten in thirty years.”

“Lady, we got bigger problems!”

She turned to look at him over her shoulder. Mark recoiled. She had no face, just a black void, with two cold glowing eyes. Her hair loosened from its pigtails and rose around her head, live spiny black tendrils, and her clothing vanished like smoke. Not a woman. Not a human being. “They won't miss what I'll take.” And she stepped behind him, as he cranked his neck back to watch her, eyes wide with horror and muscles straining against the tape, and the hair on her head reached down, hooked into his skin, coiled around his throat, stabbed into his veins and nerves like roots seeking water, and  _pulled_ and  _pulled—_

Mark stared down at his lap, dazed. He was duck-taped to a chair in his home office, stripped to his boxers, hands and feet numb with cold, and so weak he could barely lift his head to see the six-point rack that hung on the wall above the cork-board. The woman, Beth or whoever, who'd helped him call Roy, was gone, and she hadn't untaped him. His head pounded and he felt nauseated. He heard footsteps in the house.

“Beth!” he croaked. “Lady?”

Last he remembered, she'd said something about being hungry. Maybe she was making herself some dinner. But the footsteps sounded slow and heavy to belong to such a small woman. “Roy?” he called, hopefully.

Couldn't be the Mexican, he wasn't much taller than the woman. Maybe the hippie.

The footsteps drew closer. He could feel them shaking the floorboards. He heard a dull clink of chains—maybe Saul, he was a big guy. “I'm in here!” he called. His voice came out faint, quavering. “Get me outta here!”

A warm yellow light glowed behind him from the doorway, and he felt welcome heat on the back of his neck. “Oh, thank God,” he sighed. “Get me outta here, the keys are in the truck. I think I gotta go to the ER, something's wrong.”

“Yes,” said a terrible voice from above him. It was deep, thundering through his chest, but the words were almost lost under the crackle of flames and rush of wind. “You conspire against the innocent.”

Not Saul. Mark jerked in his chair, overbalanced, and cracked to the floor on his back. He stared up at a bright yellow light. The fire that illuminated his office. A human skull, stripped clean of flesh, tilting down at him in expressionless judgment. “What are you,” he hissed. “What do you want, what are you, you mutie fucker, you demonic sonofabitch—”

The specter reached down and grabbed the chair, jerked him upright as if he weighed nothing. It was a biker, human-shaped, wearing fucking blue jeans and a spiked jacket, gloves, and where he could see down its neck-hole, nothing inside at all, just bone and fire. “I am not demonic,” it boomed. “I am your punishment.”

As it reached for his face, Mark twisted his face away, looking for someone, anyone. He saw the Mexican kid standing in the corner, one eye flashing in the light of the ghost's fires, fists clenched. “Help me,” Mark pleaded. “Please. Don't let him kill me, I don't deserve to die—”

“Me, neither,” the kid said. “Shit happens.”

The ghost seized him by the jaw, bent low over his face. Mark stared helplessly into the voids of its eyesockets, at the little cracks and pores in the scoured bone. “Mark Thompson. You conspire against the innocent. Your intentions are evil and your actions cruel. You will feel your victims' pain.”

And in the ghost's eyes, Mark saw, Mark felt:

In 1992, Mark, with his friends Roy and Earl, had savagely beaten a classmate on two separate occasions. He felt his own boots in his kidneys, his own ribs shattering, teeth loose in his mouth. He felt the decades of fear, the long and stuttering recovery that was never complete.

In 1998, Mark had married Sophie Springfield, and he had used her when he'd wanted, ignored her when he didn't. He had raped his wife, and now he felt himself rape himself. He felt her despair, her guilt.

In 2001, Sophie gave him his first son, Mark Junior. She had not been ready for children, but he'd insisted. He felt her labor. He felt the future closing in on her, all thoughts of divorce and escape shuttering under the need to provide for this new life. He felt her give birth to their second son, Dave, and their daughter, Cindy. He felt her sleepless anxiety for the three children she'd brought into his home.

In 2002, Mark had swerved to strike a marmot as it crossed the road. He felt his pelvis shattered, the hours of agony before the blood-loss took him.

Between 2009 and 2014, Mark had begun to drink every night and regularly strike Sophie and Dave: Sophie because she did not love him, Dave because he was weak. Mark Junior, following his example, hit his sister, took her things. He felt every blow, felt the crawling anxiety that rose in their spines whenever Mark and Mark Junior came home, and the shame in Sophie's heart at Mark Junior's violence and her failure to protect Dave and Cindy.

Since he'd bought his first car, Mark had plastered every vehicle he drove with his opinions. He felt the shock of fear, the guardedness, the paranoia he inspired in those he threatened.

In 2010, Mark stole wages from his ranch-hands and chased them out of town, bad-mouthed them to other ranchers. He felt their betrayal, their desperation.

In 2011, Mark lead Roy and three other friends to beat two migrant workers and burn down the trailer they'd rented. He felt their terror, their broken bones, the despair of one man and the helpless fury of the other, and all the terror and helplessness of their friends and family.

In 2015, when Sophie divorced him, Mark had drugged and raped his cousin's wife. He felt her bewilderment, her shock, the terror that built and built as the evidence of what had happened mounted without ever answering who had hurt her.

In 2017, Mark had struck a counterprotester from behind with a tire iron. He felt the shock, the nerve damage.

In the ghost's eyes, Mark saw his life. He saw his value and his place in society, and the reward due him for his actions. As the ghost released him, his head dropped, but the pain and horror remained.  _Kill me,_ he thought, too weak to make words.  _Undo me, burn me away._

But the ghost turned away and left him.

The Mexican kid stepped forward, lifted his chin, looked his face over with his mismatched eyes. Snapped his fingers behind his head.

“Kill me,” Mark managed.

“I don't need to,” the kid said. And he, too, turned and left Mark alone with the weight of his sin.

 


	2. It's A Trap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Ghost Rider and the Roast Rider confront a white-nationalist biker club. It's a curb-stomp battle. Somehow, Robbie manages to almost die.
> 
> Written for the Fan-Flashworks challenge "cave" and the Birthday Bingo prompt "whistle."

A rumbling chorus of Harley engines crescendoed from the distance, the sound carrying through the night over fields and pastures, drawing closer, closer. Inside the Charger, Robbie licked his lips, wrapped human hands around his steering wheel, counted his breaths. In-two-three, out-two-three, the valves of his blower flicking open and shut. He tasted engine fumes as he exhaled. The key wasn't even in the ignition, but the car was still warming. His arms shook, and he pressed his spine hard into his driver's seat. In-two-three, out-two-three.

His tires settled into the compacted loam of the pasture as he waited, concealed from the road by a livestock trailer that sat near the gate of the ranch. A cattle-grate, a tubular-steel gate, and a mile or so of barbed wire made up the perimeter. A low house squatted in the center, inside its own, smaller fence that kept the cows off the front porch. Storage sheds and an open-air barn behind the house.

Inside the house was a stuporous wreck of a human being. Noble had done something to him, looked him in the eye with the penance stare and made him sorry for everything in his life he should have been sorry for, and his mind had shattered under the strain. Robbie had searched the house while they waited for his buddies to come to the rescue. Nazi propaganda all over his browser history. Hand-drawn maps. Weapons. File folders stuffed with paperwork about divorce proceedings. According to Black Rose, these guys were the real deal. Not satisfied with fantasy, they wanted to cause terror.

**Come on, kid, fire it up, I wanna feel their skulls pop under our wheels!**

Robbie breathed, shivered, swallowed down soot. _Noble has a plan. Just wait two more minutes._ He could see headlamps now, far down the road. The engines grew closer, closer: loud mufflers, bass rumbles, and the higher-pitched buzz of a dirt bike. They drew up to the gate and the engines slowed, chugged. Robbie heard the rattle of a chain, the creak of steel. His foot almost brushed the gas pedal. In-two-three, out-two-three, he stretched back again, digging his head hard into the headrest, scraped his drying tongue against his teeth, swallowed black bitter saliva. There were footsteps on gravel. The gate swung open with a long soft creak, the chain dragged over the ground, brushed against tall weeds.

Something wet and raspy brushed against his rear quarter panel and he gasped, checked the mirrors. There was a hairy black cow standing behind him, almost on top of him. It lowered its head to his wheel well and licked him again, scraping away the salty grime of Illinois' roads.

**Curiosity killed the cow.** Robbie shook his head hard. As the cow lowered its head for another swipe, he let the car spark up just enough to give it a good scare. He couldn't be worrying about a cow when the fight was on. The cow bellowed, a startling foghorn sound, and bolted off into the darkness.

The footsteps beyond the stock trailer paused, crept forward carefully. Then they retreated back through the gate. Robbie tensed. Plan B: burst through the fence and run down the bikers on the road. But he waited still; whoever opened the gate, had to get back on his bike now. And sure enough, a moment later, Robbie heard the Harley engines rumbling down the gravel driveway into the ranch. The dirt bike buzzed, stationary, just outside the gate.

Robbie stared at the roof of the house, in-two-three, out-two-three, faster and faster, his palms hot in his gloves, engine fumes and oil-smoke filling his nostrils. He saw the Harleys come around the stock trailer, sank lower in his seat. Saw four tail-lights pass. _**Come on. Come on.**_

On the roof, Noble burst into flame, his skull and the wheels of his bike flaring out into the night.

_**Yes.**_ Robbie started the engine and the car exploded the moment it turned over, burning his body out of his way in a welcome blast of heat, tires blazing, blower screaming. He cranked the wheel, poured on the gas, and melted straight through the stock trailer, toward the gate. Aluminum peeled and curled behind him and he saw a figure waiting at the side of the road, a guy in a helmet leaning on a dirt bike. The helmet turned, the guy struggled to hop on his bike, peeled away in a spray of gravel. _**Oh no you don't.**_ Mud and gravel spun out under the Charger's wheels, but he picked up speed, climbed up onto the driveway, made it to the road and shot forward, thirty, fifty, ninety, one-fifty, two-hundred, the fleeing dirt bike was going flat-out and the Rider was gaining on him. He melted out through the hood, fire streaming out through his vents and teeth, a comet in the night. The biker looked back over his shoulder, once, twice, pouring on the throttle, but the little machine was giving all it had. The Rider whipped a chain at him, coiled it around his waist, snatched him up into the air. Crushed the dirt-bike under his wheels.

He slammed the brakes, locked his wheels up into a hundred-and-eighty-degree power-slide, came to rest facing back the way he came. Headlamps and fire chased each-other around in the distance: Noble and the bikers on Harleys. Gunfire crackled: fast at first, then slower and slower.

He stuffed the screaming biker into his trunk, revved his engine, streaming fire high into the night, and then launched forward, clinging hands and feet to his roof, the road streaking away under his wheels faster and faster. Slid into another hard stop just before the gate. Roared back into the ranch.

Noble chased the Harleys around and around the ranch, his wheels leaving streaks of fire in the weeds. He was herding them away from the exit, keeping them moving—they could hop the fence to escape, but not if they were too frightened to dismount their bikes, and Noble Kale was frightening. Spectral fire, unnatural speed, a motorcycle that never slid out, never lost traction in the muddy pasture, a grim grinning skull.

The Rider saw three Harleys. Four had entered the ranch. The biker in the trunk, pounding and kicking at the steel, made five.

“Hey, Ghost!” Black Rose whistled from the front door of the house, hefted a half-conscious man by the throat and flung him to the dirt. He didn't move. “Caught this one coming in the back door.”

Everyone accounted for. **Let's clean house, kid.**

He revved his engine and roared to catch Noble's attention. Noble nodded, pointed him to the left, leaned his bike right, peeled aside in a blazing arc. Two bikers tried to thread the needle between them, spraying mud as they fled for the exit, and Noble flung out the steel chain he carried around his shoulders. It stretched out impossibly. Across the gap, the Rider caught it. Braced it at neck level. Howled in triumph as the chain jerked in his hands, knocked the bikers over. The bikes raced on without them halfway across the pasture before falling in the mud.

He released Noble's chain.

Noble coiled it back over his chest. Dismounted the bike, stalked over the mud to one of the fallen men. He was tall, heavyset, wearing a tin-pot military-styled helmet with an open face that revealed his drawn, white lips, his wide terrified eyes. Noble gripped him by the collar of his leather jacket and lifted him high overhead. “You have inflicted pain and fear upon the innocent and aspire to do more,” he rumbled. “Now suffer as you have caused others to suffer.” And he stared the man in the eyes, and the man began to scream, and scream.

It went on. The Rider stared, transfixed, his fists clenching and relaxing. The other man on the ground got up and began to run; the Rider stepped off the car and ran him over with it, parked on his leg, never turning his gaze away from Noble and the man whose mind he was breaking. At last Noble looked away, dropped the man to the ground. He was still screaming, wailing, his eyes wide and vacant. He began to form words, half-formed: _sorry, I'm sorry, so sorry, why, why did I do—_

**He's not dead.**

_He's_ _**better** _ _than dead._

The Rider dropped through the darkness back into the car. Reversed off the other man's foot, melted out, grabbed him and threw him at Noble's feet. Noble snatched up this one, too, looked him in the eyes, and new screams split the night.

Black Rose whistled again. “Kid!”

The Rider tore his gaze away from Noble and the second man.

Black Rose pointed sharply behind him. The last biker was sneaking away. The Rider snarled, melted back into the car, launched into the night after him in a spray of fire and gravel. Lashed out with his chain, and tore off through the ranch, dragging him over the ground, rumbling laughter, watching him bounce and cry, dirt and melted rubber from the tires spattering his body. **Heh-ha-ha, you like that? Tarred and feathered, boy, tarred and feathered! Eat cowshit, Nazi!**

_Eat shit, Nazi!_

**Which one do you think he is? Roy the right hand man? Private Ryan? The club's accountant?**

_He's a Nazi!_ The Rider gave the chain a jerk, slamming the man into a water-trough. _He hangs with them, he condones them, I don't give a shit who he is!_

**Back up and crush his head! Squash him like a bug!**

They circled around the back of an outbuilding. The Rider shook the chain a little, thinking. The man screamed. In the distance, cows crowded against the back fence. Abruptly they felt a tug on the chain, another scream from the man they were dragging. Saw a wire twang free behind them, from where it had snagged on the man’s body. There was a gap in the fence.

The Charger slowed, reversed. The Rider melted out of the car to scoop the man up, popped the trunk and dumped him on top of the other one. _I want Noble to do it._

**Fuck you, fuck, you're cheating, they all deserve DEATH, that's not our deal, kill one! Kill all of 'em! You selfish lazy bitch, you never do the hard work, you never make the hard choices—**

_Killing people is not. Fucking. Difficult._ The Rider growled, fire spitting between his teeth. _Noble does it better! I want them to feel what Noble makes them feel! I want them to suffer!_ _Pay!_

Eli sputtered in his head. **It's a cop-out! It's—it's cruel, and impractical! Cruel and impractical punishment!**

The Rider backed up next to the gap in the fence. It looked crudely flattened, the steel posts bent and the top wire cut. Tire tracks lead into the ranch, through the neighboring property. Crushed plants. If there was a way to tell how recent they were, he didn't know it.

_Someone broke in._

**Kill one!**

In the distance, the screaming faded. _We'll check it out later._ The Rider took off, back to the house. Back to where Noble Kale had just administered the penance stare to the man Black Rose had dumped on the front lawn. The Rider popped the trunk and hauled out the two men within. Ripped their helmets off and held them up to Noble by the backs of their necks, crying and struggling, like a child holding up two dolls to repair. Noble seized the man from the dirt bike. A young man, unshaven but with little worth shaving, watery blue eyes. Robbie's age. The Rider watched, spellbound, as Noble made contact, and this young man, hardly older than twenty, seized up in his grip and went silent, twitching, his jaw slack.

Burning oil from the Rider's breath spattered the man he still held waiting. The Rider ignored his struggles, watched Noble Kale work, his own flames rising hot and fast.

When Noble dropped the young man, he was silent and lay as if dead, glassy eyes staring. “He has murdered,” Noble informed him, shoving the man away with the toe of his boot. “His penance was severe.”

The Rider snarled, blower shrieking. He held out the last man, a yelling and struggling offering. _Do him. Do this one now._

And Noble took him, hefted him overhead as though weighing him, looked him in the eyes, in his burned and spattered face, and the man stopped kicking and shoving and began to cry and weep, _no, no-no-no, I didn't—I didn't mean—_

He released him and the man crabwalked backward until he pressed against the wall of the house, his boots skidding in the dirt, palms slipping on the siding, eyes wide and horrified. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry—”

The Rider snarled, stormed up to him, and stomped on his knee until it broke. _**Fuck you.**_

Black Rose stared silently at him, blank shining eyes and black mask-face, leaning against the porch. “Are you done?”

The Rider spun on her, flames streaking up from his vents.

“You know that's one of the worst things that can happen to a person,” Black Rose said. “What Noble does. Seeing your sin and paying for it. It breaks you, mentally.”

“ _It's perfect._ ”

She tilted her head at the man whose leg he'd just broken.

“ _ **Insurance.**_ ”

“Why not kill him.”

“ _Too selfish._ ” He jerked his head behind him, brought the car near. “ _Someone came in. They broke the fence._ ”

“You sure the cows didn't do it? This place is a disaster,” Black Rose said.

“ _Tire tracks._ ”

“Let's check it out,” she said, and stalked over to the car. Got in the passenger seat, fearless of the flames from the lights and blower and tires and the interior air-vents. He felt the thorny tendrils of her hair probing and scratching at the headrest.

Noble joined them as they rumbled over to the tire tracks. There was a pattern in the grass: stop, park and sink ruts in the pasture, and then turn in a circle and back over the flattened section of wire fence. Big tracks, probably a truck. With the fence’s top wire cut, a high-clearance vehicle could have passed over. The metal posts that supported the wire were bent and flattened for yards in each direction, the ground disturbed around their bases. The weeds around where the truck had stopped were burnt and flattened from where the Rider had been dragging the man whose leg he'd just broken; if there were foot-tracks, he couldn't recognize them. Black Rose got out and searched the barn, about twenty yards away. But if the intruder had come for the barn, why not drive all the way over to it. **Could snipe us from the second floor.** No one had shot at them after the gang used up all their ammo on Noble. _It doesn't make sense._ The Rider hauled himself up out of his roof and stared down at the mud and dirt, circling the area the truck had parked. It was just a featureless patch of ground—no, there was a concrete ring sticking out of the ground, three feet wide— **septic system—** the Charger nosed close to it, and abruptly sank down, earth caving in under the right front tire. The Rider revved the engine irritably and backed out. Peered down into the hole by the light of his flames.

**Don't smell like a septic system.**

_We can't smell._

**Oh right.**

He saw a cramped space, about the width of the Charger and eight feet deep, crammed with fifty-gallon drums and heavy-looking plastic sacks. Cinderblock walls, rotting strips of plywood collapsing down from the ceiling, earth and manure everywhere from where the roof had caved in. He let himself down into the hole, his boots sinking immediately into slippery mud.

The little space led through the darkness toward the supposed septic tank access. A crude rack made from spikes of re-bar stuck out from one wall, empty. Two of the barrels were overturned, and a pile of empty plastic sacks stuck out of the mud. He couldn't move anywhere without tripping on something. The cinderblock wall bulged on one side, about to give way from the pressure of mud and cattle and years of changing seasons. His boot struck a box, and he felt down through the mud for it: pulled up a hefty bundle of plastic tape shrink-wrapped around a long rope of tan, doughy material. Like bad gas-station sausage stick, made by the yard. He wiped mud off it, looking for the label.

_Tovex. What's Tovex?_ The mud looked strange on his fingers. Gray and gritty, not black, like the soil of the ranch. Slick. Fast-drying.

**Good shit! I could make twenty car bombs outta this!**

Rage flared, hot oil crackling between the Rider's teeth, fire streaming from his vents. He flung the Tovex away. _They're making a fucking_ _ **bomb?**_

And then the world vanished. Punched the fire out of him, ripped him open. Metal squealed, the car flipped through the air onto its back, glass shattered, the front quarter warped. He hit the ground, plowed into the wet earth, mud in his teeth, cowshit in his eyesockets, flames spilling out of his shredded skin, wheels spinning on air, engine screaming. His hands and face felt cold, his ribs loose in his chest, little chunks of charcoal. He was cooling too fast, about to snuff out, and if his flesh poured over his bones right now...his throttle was wide open, but he couldn't even raise his hand to feel how injured he was. He dropped through his shadow and merged with the battered car, called all his steel and glass back into place, shifted to neutral, collected himself.

**Ow.**

_I don't think that stuff on the floor was mud._

**No shit.**

The engine rumbled steadily, the blower hissed. The roof pressed into the soil, the wheels streamed fire up into the night.

Behind him, through his mirrors, he watched Black Rose jog toward the place his body had fallen, calling out, “Kid? Kid, you okay?” Noble blazed over on his bike. They searched the mud and rubble by the light of Noble’s flames, paced back and forth.

He revved the Charger’s engine, beeped the horn twice. They turned and made their way to the car. He felt their hands on his door panels, saw Noble’s skull, Black Rose’s expressionless mask peering in at his empty driver seat. He revved his engine again. He was fine. Just…tired.

Noble dismounted, put his hands to the door and rear quarter panel, and started to roll the car upright. The Rider heaved himself out of the steel reluctantly, put his shoulders under the front of the car, and joined him.

When the wheels crashed down to the ground again, and he'd healed up the dents in the roof and the snapped-off side mirror, the Rider leaned heavily against the passenger side door and snuffed out. Robbie bent over, braced his hands on his knees. The rumble of the engine made his vision dance. His stomach heaved and he collapsed to the dirt, knee sinking into a cow-patty, and puked up chicken wings and burnt motor oil.

“Cheez-its,” Black Rose said.

Robbie gave her a weak thumbs-up, breathed carefully, keeping his head down as he waited for his stomach to settle. Nothing worse than inhaling motor oil.

“Smells like super-glue all over here,” she continued.

Robbie took a cautious whiff. She was right. Aside from burnt oil and habañero sauce, the smoky air smelled like a nice hot mix of “for God's sake wear a respirator” and “turn on the big fan when you're using that shit.” Nitro solvent.

**Timmy!**

_Who?_

**Oklahoma City car-bomb! Couple years back. Shit, these copycats got taste!**

_You mean...in the nineties?_

**Yeah, yeah, '95. Truck fulla fertilizer and nitro fuel, talk about bang for your buck!**

“I think they wanted to make a fertilizer bomb,” Robbie croaked. Pushed himself up. Wiped fruitlessly at the cowshit on his jeans.

“I see that,” Black Rose said. She was standing at his front bumper, hands on her hips, eyeing the massive crater strewn with cinder-blocks and shreds of plastic that had appeared in the pasture next to them. Robbie braced himself on his roof and stared, too. There was nothing left of the walls of the pit, just a black hole. Forty feet away, caught in the Charger's headlights, lay shattered fragments of the supposed septic tank access hatch. “There's downsides to running around on fire all the time.”

Noble, beside him, snuffed out. He looked fresh and healthy and not at all like he was about to bend over and puke up a quart of oil. “How mortal are you?” he asked, brow furrowed.

Eli offered no explanation. Robbie shrugged at Noble.

“I have endured blasts like that before,” Noble said, “entirely unharmed. I think my spirit body is more durable than yours. In the future, _I_ should investigate explosives.”

**Smug fucker. “Oh I have the Penance Stare, stand aside.” “Oh I have more experience” says Mr. What Is A Social Security Number. “Oh I am indestructible.” Fuck off.**

“I didn't know it was explosive until I got in there,” Robbie said. “There was this gray mud all over the floor. I think whoever came here mixed it up before he left as, like, a booby trap.”

They all stared down into the hole. The shreds of plastic.

Black Rose spoke. “That's not a great way to get rid of evidence.”

**If it was me, I'd take everything I could carry. Leave the fifty gallon drums, but any smaller containers, and definitely the Tovex, stuff it in a bag, make a run for it, take out the target. I like this guy's style, kid. We should tell him. While we're dragging him up and down I-72!**

“We gotta find him,” Robbie said. “Them. Black Rose, you said they had some kind of plan? Well, we lured them here and pissed them off and one of them came and left while we were busy punishing the rest.”

“Hey!” she snapped. “We got seven of them tonight. Made seven ex-Nazis. Blew up most of their stash. Stamped this cell out for good; nobody's gonna rally around a buncha broken, babbling mental wrecks. Whoever's loose, he's got less than a quarter the power of whatever they had stashed down there. We did good.”

**Except nobody's fucking dead!**

“You are both right,” Noble interrupted, raising his hand. “We have avenged the innocent and disrupted their plans, but our hunt is not finished. We must find the last man. Tonight. Before he murders more.”

“Do you think the guys you penance-stared know where he'd be?” Robbie asked. “Since they're. You know. Penitent?”

“Maybe the guy with the broken leg, he's sort-of coherent,” said Black Rose. “Come on. Let's move your race-car before it sinks in the mud. Get to the house, get you an Alka-Seltzer and some crackers. Quick, before the Sheriff comes to check out that explosion.” She braced her hands on the Charger's back bumper. “Noble, give me a hand. You know how to rock the clutch, kid? You want me to do it?”

Rock the clutch? Robbie climbed into the driver's seat, started up.

**You never been stuck in the mud before. Let me.**

Robbie looked back in the rear-view mirror, Black Rose's mask-face and coiling-uncoiling hair, Noble's stern, earnest expression, both of them bent against his trunk, bracing him. Keeping him from slipping backward. _Okay. Show me what to do._

And Eli took hold of Robbie’s body, worked the clutch and the throttle to roll the car backward and forward while Rose and Noble shoved him from behind, until the Charger rose up out of the ruts it had pressed in the pasture and rolled away toward firmer ground. They parked on the gravel driveway. The moment Noble cruised over on his motorcycle, Eli ducked back under. Spooked. Robbie smiled to himself.

  
  


 

**Author's Note:**

> If you're wondering who Black Rose is, in Ghost Rider (1990), Roxanne Simpson dies pointlessly. Later she is resurrected as a demon serving Blackheart in Hell. Her memories of her earthly life were restored to her, but she rejects them. Her exact powers in the comic were unclear. 
> 
> The Ghost Rider here is the Ghost Rider of 1990, Noble Kale, who got his own body (releasing Danny Ketch from possession) at the end of his comics run. We never saw him again because the editors didn't like him.
> 
> Robbie Reyes doesn't have a Penance Stare. He makes people feel the pain...literally.


End file.
